UC Irvine

The ideological conception of populism defines populism as a conception of politics that consists of a belief in the existence of a homogenous and “true people, a Manichean perception of political conflict, and anti-elite viewpoints. From a populist lens any and all political and social conflicts within a society can be understood as a clash between the virtuous, “true” citizens and the corrupt elite. Beginning from the premise that attitudes concerning racial and ethnic difference play key roles in the establishment of a litany of political viewpoints and stances, this project looks to investigate the potential relationship between populist ideology and racism. Survey work within populism studies has typically only investigated the relationship between populist attitudes and race/racism within the context of the relationship between right-wing populism and xenophobia/ethnocentrism. This project looks to expand the scope of these investigations by investigating the relationship between populist attitudes and several conceptions of anti-Blackness within the American setting. By moving interrogations of the populism-racism relationship beyond the strict scope of xenophobia there is potential to understand the degree that successful populist appeals, with their logic rooted in conceptions of citizenship, are at least partially impacted by the degree that individuals have or have not internalized hegemonic perceptions of racial hierarchies. Through an online survey of 980 adults this project investigates the relationship between a five-dimension populism scale and measures of implicit racism and anti-Blackness, in addition to several other potentially correlated features and attitudes. Findings suggest that anti-democratic beliefs and anti outgroup sentiments function as core sub-dimensions of populist thought, while also indicating a significant relationship between populism and several manifestations of anti-Black attitudes.